Ecuador tips toward chaos amid prison breaks, armed TV takeover

Ecuador's new president, Daniel Noboa, declared a 60-day state of emergency on Monday, a day after one of the country's most powerful gang leaders, Adolfo "Fita" Macías, vanished from his prison cell. "The time when drug traffickers, hitmen and organized crime tells the government what to do is over," Noboa said.

Organized crime appeared to strike back Tuesday, with explosions, gunfire police abductions, looting, and prison riots reported across the country and masked gunman seizing public TV station TC Televisión during a live broadcast, taking employees hostage until police stormed the studio and arrested all 13 gunmen. Nobody was killed in the armed TV occupation in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, but the brazen attack shocked the once-calm country, now embroiled in gang violence tied to international drug trafficking.

Police said eight people were killed and three injured elsewhere in Guayaquil and two police officers were killed in nearby Nobol. Several other police officers and prison guards were also taken prisoner by gang members. And along with the apparent prison break of Macías, who heads the powerful Los Choneros gang, Ecuadorean officials said Tuesday that Los Lobos gang leader Fabricio Colón Pico had escaped from prison in the town of Riobamba.

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Ecuador blames Los Choneros, with reputed ties to Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, for much of the spike of violence in the country, The Associated Press reported. Two Ecuadoran intelligence officials told The Washington Post that the Los Lobos gang likely orchestrated the TV takeover, possibly to warn the government not to follow through with its plans to transfer top gang leaders to maximum-security prisons from the lax lower-security facilities from which they run their gangs.

A government spokesperson said authorities had planned to transfer Macías to a maximum-security prison shortly before his escape, and suggested he learned of this plan from a high-level leak.

Noboa, a banana empire scion sworn in last November after campaigning on restoring order to Ecuador, responded to Tuesday's chaos by declaring the country in "internal armed conflict" and authorizing the military to "neutralize" the "transnational organized crime, terrorist organizations and belligerent non-state actors" within the bounds of international humanitarian law.

Hopefully this will be "a turning point" in Ecuador's fight against lawlessness, U.S. analyst Will Freeman told AP. "If these guys can storm a TV station or kill a presidential candidate, you as a judge will not go up against them unless you really have strong assurances of your safety."